The History of the Telephone by Herbert Newton Casson
page 13 of 248 (05%)
page 13 of 248 (05%)
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For the next two years his telegraphic work
was laid aside, if not forgotten. His success as a teacher of deaf-mutes was sudden and overwhelming. It was the educational sensation of 1871. It won him a professorship in Boston University; and brought so many pupils around him that he ventured to open an ambitious "School of Vocal Physiology," which became at once a profitable enterprise. For a time there seemed to be little hope of his escaping from the burden of this success and becoming an inventor, when, by a most happy coincidence, two of his pupils brought to him exactly the sort of stimulation and practical help that he needed and had not up to this time received. One of these pupils was a little deaf-mute tot, five years of age, named Georgie Sanders. Bell had agreed to give him a series of private lessons for $350 a year; and as the child lived with his grandmother in the city of Salem, sixteen miles from Boston, it was agreed that Bell should make his home with the Sanders family. Here he not only found the keenest interest and sympathy in his air-castles of invention, but also was given permission to use the cellar of the house as his workshop. For the next three years this cellar was his favorite retreat. He littered it with tuning- |
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